What new word did you learn today?

[defaux]

Really? It's common in the US, but obviously was never exported to Oz.

Yeah, it was. I recall it being used around the high school era. Along with tonsil hockey.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

tonsil hockey

Oh, dear. I am hard to gross out, but...

 

[takadote26]

I learnt the word 'Marmite', because it's similar to vegemite but tastes more like salted fish (ikan), xD They mix marmite with fish soup in Malaysia

 

[Naomasa298]

Vegemite is basically an upside down version of Marmite.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Vegemite sounds like a pest in root crops.

 

[Heartlet Happer]

Vegemite sounds like a pest in root crops.

Voice over: It is early spring in Tartaria, the ground appear bare with no sign of anything happening. But in the shallow underground, the tubers already began to wake. Withing the depths of one especially thick horseradish there lives a family of vegemites. (camera zooms into macro)

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Voice over: It is early spring in Tartaria, the ground appear bare with no sign of anything happening. But in the shallow underground, the tubers already began to wake. Withing the depths of one especially thick horseradish there lives a family of vegemites. (camera zooms into macro)

Have I mentioned what an asset you are to this place?

 

[JLT]

Voice over: It is early spring in Tartaria, the ground appear bare with no sign of anything happening. But in the shallow underground, the tubers already began to wake. Withing the depths of one especially thick horseradish there lives a family of vegemites. (camera zooms into macro)

I can just hear David Attenborough's voice there.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Speaking as an Australian (who can't stand Vegemite), here are some facts about our so-called 'National paste':

Vegemite was invented in Melbourne in 1923 by chemist Dr. Cyril Callister. Developed for the Fred Walker Company, this iconic, salty, black yeast-extract spread (yuck -Ed.) was created to provide a local alternative to British Marmite. It has been produced in Port Melbourne for over 100 years.

The ingredients originated in leftover brewer's yeast. (Still yuck -Ed.)

Hilariously, Vegemite was banned from Victorian prisons in 2006. The reason was to prevent inmates from brewing alcohol using the paste's high yeast content—even though Vegemite, according to the manufacturers, does not contain any live yeast. ;-P A more plausible reason is that inmates used to smear packages of illicit drugs with Vegemite, since it has a strong smell that can confuse drug detection dogs.

Similar bans were proposed in 2015 for a number of dry communities in outback Australia, but they were not enacted. In 2025, Andre McKechnie (a convicted murderer serving a life sentence) challenged the prison ban, arguing that it deprived him of the right to enjoy his culture as an Australian. The case is set for trial in 2026.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

I'll stick with peanut butter, the chunky style with nothing but peanuts and salt, please.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

I'll stick with peanut butter, the chunky style with nothing but peanuts and salt, please.

Agreed. Crunchy peanut butter all the way!

 

[Schism]

Probably a neologism I already forgot.

Cheese upon my enemies.

 

[Also]

Webster's suggests that canoodle originates "perhaps from English dialect canoodle, noun, donkey, fool, foolish lover" (but gives no proof of this).

That would make it very similar to fool[ing] around. A peeved sometime-girlfriend of mine once wrote to me from summer vacation that she had called up her HS boyfriend and asked him, "Wanna fool around?" He did, and they did, and she just wanted to keep me up to date. But hey, it was the 1970's.

 

[JLT]

That would make it very similar to fool[ing] around. A peeved sometime-girlfriend of mine once wrote to me from summer vacation that she had called up her HS boyfriend and asked him, "Wanna fool around?" He did, and they did, and she just wanted to keep me up to date. But hey, it was the 1970's.

I'm still sticking with the German derivation. I think that, along with so many other slang terms, it was actually derived from Yiddish, which is a dialect of German. But maybe that's just mashuggah.

 

[Also]

But hey, it was the 1970's

For those who missed them — the last decade before neopuritanism and neoconservativism — the 1970s brought a mainstreaming of the 1960s with the addition of showers, haircuts, and disposable income.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

But maybe that's just mashuggah.

LOZEM GEYN!

The fun bit about this scene is that there actually were been Jewish cowboys, as well as Jewish members of Native American tribes. There was even a Jewish "chief" of a tribe (or as close as almost makes no difference) -- Solomon Bibo.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

There's nothing remarkable about Jewish cowboys.

 

[Rath Darkblade]

There's nothing remarkable about Jewish cowboys.

How so, Catriona? *curious*

There is a stereotype of Jews as weak and/or urban, and so unfitted for the "manly" work of the Wild West. But like many stereotypes, this simply isn't true. Between the late 1880s and World War 1, plenty of Jews - about two million of them - emigrated from Eastern Europe and its attendant racism and pogroms to the USA, which was known as "the Golden land" because if its opportunities for anyone to make a living.

At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Jewish people migrated to Argentina, where thousands of them became Jewish gauchos (aka Argentinian cowboys), and infused Argentinian culture with a heady mix of Yiddish and Spanish. They are known in Spanish as “Gauchos Judios”- literally “Jewish cowboys.”

There have also always been strong German, Spanish and Italian communities in Argentina, and many of these Western European immigrants were sympathetic to the Nazis. By the 1950s there was a strong Jewish community as well as a strong ex-Nazi or Nazi-sympathizing community in Argentina. More recently, the old anti-Semitic tropes have been rearing their ugly heads in Buenos Aires again, which is a pity.

I agree with you that there's nothing strange about Jews becoming cowboys, but I think it's remarkable that they made a life in that way, because most European Jews had no experience of farming. But they learned as they went, serving on councils, starting businesses (e.g. Levi Strauss), or becoming cowboys, sheriffs and even one or two Native American "chiefs", which is, I think, unexpected and wonderful.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

It's a pretty simple statement, Rath. I have lived in cowboy country all my life. At a roundup or branding, one can't tell the Jewish cowboys from the Christian cowboys from the followers of the Great Cow Goddess. They all get cowkicked and bucked off at some point.

That urban Europeans with no farming or ranching backgrounds became cowboys is no more unusual than rural Europeans with no familial history of law enforcement or military backgrounds becoming cops and marines. A third of the people in my college ag program were city boys from southern California who'd never been anywhere near a tractor or a horse, including a guy who hailed from the Fairfax District in LA. I was the only woman in the program and got pretty tired of hearing some version of, Wow, a girl! Practicing Judaism (which I no longer do) was far less remarkable.

 

[JLT]

There's nothing remarkable about Jewish cowboys.

And, of course, there's a country-rock band called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, most famous for their song "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore."